Sure, take away a mortgage payment, car payment, food, taxes and cost of raising children or perhaps an aging parent(s) and you should be able to afford a non-subsided program so you can subsidize someone else.
Well when you start adding dependents, the threshold for getting subsidies goes up too, so be careful what you’re counting here.
If an individual can’t afford insurance premiums and pay their bills for only one person at nearly median family income, they need to re-examine their spending patterns because their priorities don’t seem very well aligned.
This is a problem which could be fixed, except instead of fixing it - the Republican Congress made it worse by getting rid of the individual mandate and the CSRs. Now people who don’t qualify for a subsidy will pay much more and their costs will go up every year.
Winning!!!
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I think repealing it without a viable replacement was lazy and very partisan. The ACA was a flawed piece of legislation that needed to be fixed. For years Republicans symbolically voted and voted and voted for its repeal and not once during that entire time did they come up with ANYTHING useful to fix the problems. Secondly I think President Obama and the democrats did a piss poor job explaining and marketing the benefits. Thirdly, I wish both sides would have put aside their partisan ■■■■■■■■ and actually worked together. This is suppose to help the American people and that is all that should matter. The repeal without a suitable replacement shows clearly that the GOP and to a certain degree the dems are all full of crap and really don’t care about US and they’re suppose to be working for US.
Are you not generalizing? Not all employers are publicly traded mega million dollar corporations.
Like the plumber, electrician, lawn care guy who comes to your house. Wife does the books. He has two crews, 4 employees?
It wasn’t just a generalization: it’s an empirical fact. Most Americans, even middle class ones, get their health insurance from their employers, not on the exchanges. And those employers are not all “publicly traded mega million dollar corporations”(?) and the people who get those plans are not generally “rich.” It’s a matter of perspective and context: people often discuss the ACA as if everyone is on the exchanges, which is obviously not true.
How do you think an employee making $15.00 an hour is going to afford any kind of deductible or co-pay?
In my state, a person (who doesn’t get healthcare through an employer) making $31,200 a year ($15 an hour) would be eligible for subsidies. The deductibles and co-pays would vary by plan.
I absolutely concede that the ACA is a big, messy technocratic kludge; like many large pieces of legislation, or any political and policy choice made in reality, it created winners and losers. There’s a lot to criticize. But I don’t think anything the GOP did or proposed (overall) in 2017 would do much to mitigate that, even as other decisions (e.g., the status of the CSRs) probably make things worse.
Seeing as they’ve mostly given up, my question was about where to go from here, politically and policy-wise.
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Do you benefit from subsidized insurance premiums?
Most working people ARE insured through their employers. What are you arguing about?
No, unless one counts a group health policy.
That’s just it. Unless someone comes up with a viable alternative, it’s very difficult to get such legislation repealed.
It’s subsidized, meaning you’re not paying what you would pay if you had to get your insurance as an individual.
what exactly can they do when they hold zero houses?
you literally said nothing
There was a good Black Mirror episode about it, eventually your insurance company will monitor you 24/7 but if you get enough exercise, don’t drink and pay them most of your salary, you can live a really long time.
And if you think it sounds far fetched, my apple watch has a feature to tie it’s health monitoring features to an insurance company. So they can see if you stand up every hour and get your 10k steps.
I’m going old school, I am just going to die when my tickets up instead of turning over my life and all my money to the insurance company.
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None of this answers margaret’s question.
Until we attack the costs that drive up our healthcare system, it won’t improve. One of those costs are frivolous lawsuits. Another is our nation’s growing obesity. Another is to allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. None of these fixes are an expense but they won’t happen due to greed, politics and the lack of personal responsibility.
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what prevents insurance companies from competing across state lines?
It’s my understanding that most states prohibit the sale of health insurance across state lines. Is that incorrect?
Right. Most states do prohibit it. Those that don’t prohibit it have yet to see any benefit whatsoever.
Also, the lawsuit line has been played out. I think almost every state has significant limits on medical tort. It hadn’t had any real effect either.
I wonder why commercials by drug companies spend over 50% of their airtime covering potential side effects? I wonder why those same commercials are often followed up by ads from lawyers describing the money that awaits those that have used those drugs?
They’re required to spend that time talking about side effects by the FDA. Lawyers gonna lawyer.
